[Armus]

This is starting to sound a lot like the "showing your cards" conversation from a month or two back...

[BCSWowbagger]

Maybe the meta didn't adapt because that kind of strategy was looked-down upon. I can say it was in my circles back in the late 90s. Who want's to play with someone who uses cheese-ball strats just because they can?

Why did mission sharing come to be seen as a cheese-ball strat, though? (How did the neutral idea of "mission openness" end up transmuting into the very negative "mission theft"?)

Most cheese is weird nonsense combos the designers didn't intend and which makes no story sense. But the concept that missions are shared by both players baked into the core of the game. It's implied by the very template of Mission cards. And it makes way more story sense than the weird gerrymandered rules we have for mission theft today.

Designers not only intended you to solve missions brought by both players, but they developed and promoted tools for it. It was one of the distinctive strengths of the Romulan affiliation, especially after Plans of the Tal Shiar. And the game's Designers expected players to seed defensively for it.

So why did something so central come to be seen as cheese? It would be like if players decided that Space/Planet dilemmas were cheese and demanded they be banned or converted to be either or . From the perspective of 1995, the place the game ended up in re: mission sharing is very weird.

I think Rachmaninoff offers some very promising starts-of-an-explanation for how this came about. The relative importance of mission requirements vs dilemma requirements in 1995-98 is a very good point. But I'm still puzzling about this part:

Stealing was at its worst after DS9 released. At some point I need to organize and post the decklists from 1998 Worlds, which was held during this time. Essentially all of these trends had hit the point where solving your opponents' missions was much easier than solving your own:

-Plans of the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order made it really easy to get the Espionage cards you needed, no need to spend a card play or Tent, or draw them naturally.

-Downloading, specifically AMS and Ops, made it really easy to grab the right personnel to steal an opponent's mission, you could get the skills just as fast as your opponent's supposedly "tuned" deck.

-Seed space was starting to become scarcer, so allocating space for defensive seeds was relatively more expensive.

According to everything I know about The Meta, here is what "should" have happened at this point in the game's development:

ITERATIVE STEP 0:
* "Only attempt opponent's missions" becomes the dominant strategy.

ITERATIVE STEP 1:
* All players start using this strategy.

ITERATIVE STEP 2:
* Since I know opponent is going to attempt my missions, I seed ALL my dilemmas under my own missions.
* Opponent does the same.
* We end up facing the exact combos as before, just now we also have to deal with mission requirements we didn't choose.

ITERATIVE STEP 3:
* Players respond by starting to attempt their own missions again, at least opportunistically, because that's where the known combos are and the requirements are lower.

ITERATIVE STEP 4:
* This tugs back and forth a few more times until we end up at equilibrium: all players seed half their dilemmas under their missions and half their dilemmas under opponent's missions. Everyone treats all missions as belonging to everyone, and everyone treats all 12 missions on the spaceline as part of a potential path to 100 points.

* Anyone who deviates from this equilibrium strategy, by trying to seed more cards at missions opponent brought or at missions they themselves brought, gets punished by opponents who ignore their overseeded missions and drive for the underseeded missions instead -- just like players today will ignore a mission with 4 dilemmas under if they have another mission with only 2 dilemmas.

ITERATIVE STEP 5:
* Players place a premium on missions with very few affiliation icons and/or extremely obscure requirements, as the only way to make things harder on their opponent. But these become normal, minor meta shifts, easily adapted to (like shifts in the dilemma meta today).

I feel like Decipher must have expected something like this as well.

Instead, we got to Iterative Step 0 and then... nothing. High-level players reached Step 1 but never (it seems) Step 2. Low-level players never even made it to Step 1. What caused the meta to get stuck?

[jadziadax8]

I believe the answer you’re looking for is the development of more non-dilemma seed cards to make the game faster, @BCSWowbagger.

Suddenly you don’t have seed slots for dilemmas to go under all 12 missions.

[GooeyChewie]

Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions specifically because of this card/rule, so functionally, it's been shut down by that card/rule...

I'm reading back through the thread, and I'm questioning whether this point is true. Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions because they don't want to let their opponents steal missions. Without the Fair Play rule, players would likely gravitate towards missions which are less likely to be stolen, either because they have weird requirements or because they only have one affiliation icon or because they're literally difficult to reach. The Fair Play rule just expands your options from corner-case missions to most "standard" missions.

[stressedoutatumc]

Maybe the meta didn't adapt because that kind of strategy was looked-down upon. I can say it was in my circles back in the late 90s. Who want's to play with someone who uses cheese-ball strats just because they can?

Why did mission sharing come to be seen as a cheese-ball strat, though? (How did the neutral idea of "mission openness" end up transmuting into the very negative "mission theft"?)

Most cheese is weird nonsense combos the designers didn't intend and which makes no story sense. But the concept that missions are shared by both players baked into the core of the game. It's implied by the very template of Mission cards. And it makes way more story sense than the weird gerrymandered rules we have for mission theft today.

Designers not only intended you to solve missions brought by both players, but they developed and promoted tools for it. It was one of the distinctive strengths of the Romulan affiliation, especially after Plans of the Tal Shiar. And the game's Designers expected players to seed defensively for it.

So why did something so central come to be seen as cheese? It would be like if players decided that Space/Planet dilemmas were cheese and demanded they be banned or converted to be either or . From the perspective of 1995, the place the game ended up in re: mission sharing is very weird.

That’s easy. I would note my thoughts exclude the case where you and I seed the same mission, and also I think this ignores if I choose to seed a mission worth 40 or more points since one is a happenstance and the other is a calculated choice.

Mission stealing is a cheese ball strat because it subverts the main interaction of the game, you attempting my dilemma. If you can easily attempt and complete missions you seeded, then that ruins the actual game because it makes that critical and difficult deckbuilding on my end not worth take IG the time to do. I’m not accusing you, but when people talk about 1e like it’s solitaire, I think they have either fallen into the trap of winning at all costs or have probably accepted a slimeyer way to victory because they certainly do not think of dilemma as an interaction. That’s how I’m openly against any mechanic that allows you to cheese through dilemma (nilz, Anastasia, kes). Before the offloading of rules into the OTF format or even the existence of cards like intermix or fair play, there was a huge door of simply playing trek by not playing trek at all. And yes this assumes that anyone agrees that the basic and intended flow of the game is to report personnel and ships, attempt your own missions, and overcome your opponents dilemma. So, circling back, that’s why mission stealing is a cheese ball strat IMO. It intentionally circumvents the intended design of the game. It’s my opinion, but the evidence is there the game agrees with me. OTF has effectively killed mission stealing. They (the rules against stealing) are now baked into the game and even if I take the chance to seed a stealable mission you can’t miseed.

[Rachmaninoff]

And yes this assumes that anyone agrees that the basic and intended flow of the game is to report personnel and ships, attempt your own missions, and overcome your opponents dilemma

This is indeed the modern conception of the game. This was not Decipher's original conception of the game in 1994: the decision to print an opponent's side of the mission was clearly intentional. The Premiere rulebook devotes a full paragraph to mission stealing, even italicizing that "Any player ... can attempt the mission, regardless of who placed the card on the spaceline."

Yet by 1999 Decipher was moving the game towards the modern conception, where the default is that your missions are yours and yours alone. BCSWowbagger's question is *why* this change happened. Many games have "stealing" rules that are accepted as perfectly natural. Nobody thinks it's cheese to intercept a pass in football, or to steal in basketball, it's part of the game and you have to stay on your toes; if I understood his question correctly, it's as if football players collectively decided that interceptions were unfair and lobbied the NFL to ban them. This would be bizarre and needing explanation. Why is something originally part of the game no longer "fair play"?

My main thesis is that it had to do with the changing balance between the difficulty of overcoming dilemmas vs. solving missions, as personnel and dilemmas got stronger and downloading became more prevalent. What was originally a balanced strategy in 1994 became much more powerful by 1998, and against the background of this deeper shift in the game stealing was reined in.

[Rachmaninoff]

According to everything I know about The Meta, here is what "should" have happened at this point in the game's development:

ITERATIVE STEP 0:
* "Only attempt opponent's missions" becomes the dominant strategy.

ITERATIVE STEP 1:
* All players start using this strategy.

ITERATIVE STEP 2:
* Since I know opponent is going to attempt my missions, I seed ALL my dilemmas under my own missions.
* Opponent does the same.
* We end up facing the exact combos as before, just now we also have to deal with mission requirements we didn't choose.

ITERATIVE STEP 3:
* Players respond by starting to attempt their own missions again, at least opportunistically, because that's where the known combos are and the requirements are lower.

ITERATIVE STEP 4:
* This tugs back and forth a few more times until we end up at equilibrium: all players seed half their dilemmas under their missions and half their dilemmas under opponent's missions. Everyone treats all missions as belonging to everyone, and everyone treats all 12 missions on the spaceline as part of a potential path to 100 points.

* Anyone who deviates from this equilibrium strategy, by trying to seed more cards at missions opponent brought or at missions they themselves brought, gets punished by opponents who ignore their overseeded missions and drive for the underseeded missions instead -- just like players today will ignore a mission with 4 dilemmas under if they have another mission with only 2 dilemmas.

ITERATIVE STEP 5:
* Players place a premium on missions with very few affiliation icons and/or extremely obscure requirements, as the only way to make things harder on their opponent. But these become normal, minor meta shifts, easily adapted to (like shifts in the dilemma meta today).

I feel like Decipher must have expected something like this as well.

Instead, we got to Iterative Step 0 and then... nothing. High-level players reached Step 1 but never (it seems) Step 2. Low-level players never even made it to Step 1. What caused the meta to get stuck?

This is an excellent question -- and thank you for explaining it in more detail, I didn't fully grasp it from your first post. I don't have a solid answer for this, but I can speculate. I'd be happy for anyone else around from back then to chime in as well.

Stealing was dominant at 1998 Worlds, and was the most-commonly played deck type there. But I don't recall it being the most-commonly played deck at any *local* tournaments I attended. Building a *good* stealing deck seemed to be the domain of the top players, even with Plans they required work and skill to design and play; it was not an auto-win like AMSQ. But at Worlds most everyone was a top player (recall back then you had to win a qualifying tournament to play, many of which attracted 40+ entrants), so this deck type was over-represented. It's possible this may have trickled back into the local meta and become more dominant eventualy, but playgroups were less connected back then and ideas spread more slowly.

Mapping this onto your explanation, I believe "iterative step 1" only happened at Worlds (or maybe other major tournaments); at least I never saw it at a local. It's very possible to me that many people went into Day 1 of '98 Worlds thinking they were one of the few clever ones to figure out how powerful mission stealing was. Chris Stevenson played a stealing deck that also tech-ed against other stealers (cool tricks like seeding Magic Carpet Ride OCD's under his planet missions with Qualor II on the spaceline), and he went undefeated in 8 rounds that day. So he made it to Iterative Step 2 and was rewarded for it. If the Worlds field played a few more matches together you probably would have seen others do likewise. But Fair Play dropped just a few months later, so the time between "everyone realizing how powerful it is" and the bullet coming out was pretty small, not enough time to reach game-theoretic equilibrium.

[BCSWowbagger]

Yet by 1999 Decipher was moving the game towards the modern conception, where the default is that your missions are yours and yours alone. BCSWowbagger's question is *why* this change happened. Many games have "stealing" rules that are accepted as perfectly natural. Nobody thinks it's cheese to intercept a pass in football, or to steal in basketball, it's part of the game and you have to stay on your toes; if I understood his question correctly, it's as if football players collectively decided that interceptions were unfair and lobbied the NFL to ban them. This would be bizarre and needing explanation. Why is something originally part of the game no longer "fair play"?

^ Yep, that's my question. And I still think your thesis is a promising start to the answer.

(And you posted again while I was writing this post, so I will read that right after I hit Submit on this one.)

I believe the answer you’re looking for is the development of more non-dilemma seed cards to make the game faster, @BCSWowbagger.

Suddenly you don’t have seed slots for dilemmas to go under all 12 missions.

Sure you do! You don't need more dilemmas to seed defensively. You just need to take your dilemmas and spread them out more.

In the game we have today, each player brings 18 dilemmas and puts (on average) 3 dilemmas under 6 missions, so there are (on average) 3 dilemmas under each mission. In the game where mission sharing is accepted and expected, each player brings 18 dilemmas and puts 1 or 2 dilemmas under 12 missions, so there are (on average) 3 dilemmas under each mission. The game would be different (less pre-planned combos, more 2E-style emergent dilemma madness) but still cromulent.

(And if you refuse put 1-2 dilemmas under all 12 missions, but opponent puts 3 under all of your missions, such that all your missions have 4-5 dilemmas but oopponent's have only 1-2... you ignore your missions and steal your opponent's!)

[BCSWowbagger]

This is an excellent question -- and thank you for explaining it in more detail, I didn't fully grasp it from your first post. I don't have a solid answer for this, but I can speculate. I'd be happy for anyone else around from back then to chime in as well.

Stealing was dominant at 1998 Worlds, and was the most-commonly played deck type there. But I don't recall it being the most-commonly played deck at any *local* tournaments I attended. Building a *good* stealing deck seemed to be the domain of the top players, even with Plans they required work and skill to design and play; it was not an auto-win like AMSQ. But at Worlds most everyone was a top player (recall back then you had to win a qualifying tournament to play, many of which attracted 40+ entrants), so this deck type was over-represented. It's possible this may have trickled back into the local meta and become more dominant eventualy, but playgroups were less connected back then and ideas spread more slowly.

Mapping this onto your explanation, I believe "iterative step 1" only happened at Worlds (or maybe other major tournaments); at least I never saw it at a local. It's very possible to me that many people went into Day 1 of '98 Worlds thinking they were one of the few clever ones to figure out how powerful mission stealing was. Chris Stevenson played a stealing deck that also tech-ed against other stealers (cool tricks like seeding Magic Carpet Ride OCD's under his planet missions with Qualor II on the spaceline), and he went undefeated in 8 rounds that day. So he made it to Iterative Step 2 and was rewarded for it. If the Worlds field played a few more matches together you probably would have seen others do likewise. But Fair Play dropped just a few months later, so the time between "everyone realizing how powerful it is" and the bullet coming out was pretty small, not enough time to reach game-theoretic equilibrium.

This is excellent. Thank you!

I don't have more to say than that right now. I have to chew on it.

[DISCO Rox No More]

I think Rachmaninoff gave a good overview of the "game theory/strategy" of mission-stealing, its evolution, and its role in high level play in history.

The only thing I would add to that, from a theory/strategy point of view, is that I would emphasize the twin facts that:

• Romulans were clearly the "mission stealers" of the original design (Espionage against Kli/Fed, Immune to Espionage, and have the ships packing both the Range and Weapons to defend their territory, without attack restrictions).
• PAQ personnel (especially P, and especially Romulans) were notably light on skills, so meeting the mission requirements mission-stealing was a lot harder. This might have been partly due to game design, but it probably owed just as much (if not far more) to the fact that Decipher was constrained to only depict personnel and their skills based on what was seen on screen (or at least felt constrained to do so by their Paramount contract). We didn't see Romulans do much, so we didn't get Romulans who could do much.

These factors help prevent mission-stealing from being developed into as widespread a strategy as one might otherwise have expected, back in the day, since it was hard, especially for more casual players.

--------------------------------

There are also more "social" reasons why mission-stealing didn't settle in to becoming a dominant or significant part of the meta, while also possibly explaining why Decipher felt it had to curbstomp it. Here are three such example reasons.

Reason 1: Deckbuilding is a huge part of the Star Trek CCG experience, but by its very nature, offers little in the way of instant gratification. You put a lot of energy into building a deck, but you don't get to feel good about it until you actually play it. The one exception (especially early in the game) may be designing, figuring out, or coming up with new or unexpected "combos." And the most frequent "combo" in Star Trek CCG is "dilemma combos." It feels good to solve the puzzle of coming up with a new, unseen, unexpected, or tricky dilemma combo, and you get that feeling even before you get to play it out in a real game (and of course the rush you get when actually using it and pulling it off is even greater).

Now imagine a world where people mission-steal frequently, so dilemmas are more evenly spread. It's hard to come up with 2-card dilemma combos, and some missions will have only 1 dilemma seeded by you. Suddenly, your decks no longer have 6 dilemma combos. They're lucky if they have any at all. So that "instant gratification" that came with deckbuilding isn't felt anymore, because you're not wasting time building combos you'll never use in a meta that doesn't support combos.

Players who like that gratification are going to feel pressure to "shame" mission-stealers, to keep that out of the meta, so they can preserve the aspect of the game they like (or rather, preserve the most enjoyable aspect of the game that is traditionally, otherwise, the least exciting).

Reason 2: Star Trek CCG's players are more inclined to be drawn in by the storytelling of the game than the "game" of the game. Back in the day, of all the major CCGs, Star Trek was by far the most story-driven. Most of us didn't choose to play Star Trek CCG back then because we loved games and thought that "Star Trek CCG" offered the best gameplay of the bunch. Rather, most of us chose to play Star Trek CCG because we loved Star Trek and the CCG let us play a game inside the world we loved. We were "Trek Fans" first and "Gamers" second.

And mission-stealing? Planning out which dilemmas to self-seed versus which to set up for us to walk through later? Bluffs and double-bluffs?

Those are more "gamey" elements, which are less interesting to a community that is less about the "CCG" and more about the "Star Trek" in "Star Trek CCG." Hell, dilemma combos are inherently more "storytelling" in their miniature three-act structure than the tactical element of scrambling for missions with only one mysterious obstacle underneath.

So the gamers who would have made "mission-stealing" a larger part of the meta probably weren't playing in the first place - if they were that kind of player, they were probably playing "Magic" or something. That left the more "storytelling" players to protect their sacred "Star Trek" at the expense of the "Game," again leading to a selection process against mission-stealing.

Reason 3: There are a lot of players (in lots of different games, not just "Star Trek CCG") that like things to be methodical, consistent, and expected. Routine. They don't like to be surprised or have their plans dashed out the window.

They're the kind of player that reads in the rulebook: "Typically, a player would place Dilemma cards under opponent's missions... but this is not the only strategy to follow." And they internalize the first part of that sentence for their first game, and don't bother with the second part of that sentence, or re-assessing as they get better at the game. Seeding dilemmas under your opponent's missions (and vice versa) is just the way things should be and they get used to that.

And so then if you try to challenge that notion, they get upset.

It's the same story with any unexpected change against the routine. How many times do you get players complaining about <Latest Interactive Deck>? It's often the same people, with the same story:

"I've played <Latest Interactive Deck> several times and I can't beat it. Can we all just agree it's overpowered already, and finally ban <Latest Interactive Deck's Key Card>?"

Then you explain that <Latest Interactive Deck> is actually quite beatable, and there are several key strategies or cards you can use to counter it, evade it, or shut it down entirely. But then they react with horror, shock, and disdain, because that would mean using cards that would otherwise slow down their super lean solitaire mission-solver deck and you can't really expect them to do that now, can you?!?!

So they shame you and "look down" on you and call it "cheese" because they just don't want to actually step up and counter the deck or adapt their tried-and-true playstyle and strategy. If they can't beat it by doing what they always used to do, then it's "overpowered" and "winning at all costs" and "slimy."

And "Mission Stealing" was just an early-history example of <Latest Interactive Deck>, of which there have since been many more.



All of the above are examples of "social reasons" why mission-stealing didn't develop as a widespread strategy in a lot of (if not most or all) the different casual metas (though Rachmaninoff points out that at high-level play it was probably more prevalent). Which makes sense, since "social reasons" are naturally going to have less of an effect on hardcore gamers at the high level.

But because it doesn't develop in the casual meta, perhaps it becomes less important at the high-level than it otherwise would be.

More importantly, when you look at the players playing the game 25 years later, you see that a lot of ideas of what the game "should be" are holdovers from the domestic metas of years past, just as much (if not more so) than from the high-level meta of years past. And so you see the extreme reluctance to endorse such a strategy today (i.e., OTF).

[DISCO Rox No More]

Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions specifically because of this card/rule, so functionally, it's been shut down by that card/rule...

I'm reading back through the thread, and I'm questioning whether this point is true. Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions because they don't want to let their opponents steal missions. Without the Fair Play rule, players would likely gravitate towards missions which are less likely to be stolen, either because they have weird requirements or because they only have one affiliation icon or because they're literally difficult to reach. The Fair Play rule just expands your options from corner-case missions to most "standard" missions.

I don't disagree with your response, I think you're just rephrasing what I said. It makes me think you didn't understand what I said (what you quoted)?

"Stealable Missions" was reduced to such a small group, and "Unstealable Missions" was expanded to such a large group, thanks to "Fair Play" card/rule, that players had no real incentive not to stick to the "Unstealable Missions" cardpool anyhow. It was a free benefit (your missions can't be stolen) at no other costs (you'd use these missions anyway). So functionally, "Fair Play" card/rule ended mission stealing.

[DISCO Rox No More]

Wow, I could not have asked for better examples of "Reason 3," above:

For example, just because you could mission steal...should you? The eventual answer for the game seems to be "no" because the rules evolved to only allow mission stealing in specific situations and by taking specific risks.

This is not a defensible position, and is an example of the "Argument from Authority" logical fallacy. Just because a certain strategy was ultimately made unplayable by new cards/rules, doesn't mean there was anything inherently wrong with that strategy.

It could be framed as a general question for players...Is it ok to win at any game-moral/game-ethical costs?

There's nothing unethical or immoral about mission-stealing, so this isn't a relevant question.

Maybe the meta didn't adapt because that kind of strategy was looked-down upon.

You're actually right about this. The problem is that you assume that the reason it was "looked-down upon" was a good and justifiable reason.

Who want's to play with someone who uses cheese-ball strats just because they can?

Just because a strategy beats your strategy, doesn't make it cheeseball. You have failed to justify why mission-stealing is "cheeseball."

Like wooopdy-doo, you exploited the game and beat me.

Playing cards in the game isn't "exploiting" the game. A strategy doesn't become an "exploit" just because you fail to counter it.

I had a friend in our trek group who always used Reskian Flute and mind-melded a bunch of music. Yep, you won but it doesn't make you a winner.

By definition, since he won, he is very much a winner.

By the same token, you are a loser because you failed to blow up his Vulcans with your ship, kill them with your dilemmas, or pack The Devil to nullify the Flute even when you knew it was coming. Had you done so and actually adapted, not only would you have not been a loser, but your friend would have been a loser, because he would have been stuck with a few Vulcans and no way to win, since he relied on the same strategy over and over again.

But it was unfun to have to seed and play cards to beat that specific strategy when you can argue it's more of an exploit of an unintentional mechanical interaction than skill of the player.

He had the skill to figure out a combo that granted him a victory. You lacked the skill to adapt.

Mechanical interactions are the essence of CCGs.

If adapting to player's strategies aren't fun for you, maybe the problem isn't the game, the cards, the strategy, or the opponent. Maybe it's you.

If you play Magic, it's the same as using infinite combos

I cannot believe you are comparing the use of Ressikan Flute (or mission-stealing) to an infinite combo (which, by the way, is functionally illegal in Magic anyhow).

The players shouldn't have to adapt to something broken the game created.

Getting 100 points isn't broken, it's how the game is won.

I wish we could count on the entire player base to have more integrity and try and win the right way...There will always be someone out there who would rather win cheap than win right.

You define "integrity" and "winning right" as playing and/or winning in the method that you play and/or win, using strategies that you use and expect. At the same time, you define "winning cheap" as winning in any way that requires adaptation by you in order to stop, or winning in a way other than how you would personally go about it, or expect it to be gone about.

But that's not "winning cheap," and players who play a winning strategy aren't "playing wrong" or "playing cheese." Rather, you're just a bad player. And since you can't win with strategy, you try to "win" by shaming them for their legitimate victory. You leverage the social sphere to win your games for you.

Mission stealing is a cheese ball strat because it subverts the main interaction of the game, you attempting my dilemma.

First, "you attempting my dilemma" is not the "main interaction of the game" just because you say it is. From the beginning, the game offered multiple avenues of interaction between players beyond simply playing and encountering dilemmas.

Second (and this has been explained before, but I'll point it out again), mission-stealing does not prevent me from facing your dilemmas. You are free to seed dilemmas under your own missions.

In fact, if you seed dilemmas under all missions, then it becomes impossible for me to solve any missions and not face your dilemmas.

By your logic, if you seeded 30 dilemmas under one of my missions, and I simply chose to solve the other 5 dilemma-less missions I seeded instead, that would be a "cheese ball strat" on my part, because I chose not to go out of my way to face your dilemmas.

If you can easily attempt and complete missions you seeded, then that ruins the actual game because it makes that critical and difficult deckbuilding on my end not worth take IG the time to do.

You can build your decks so that you can face mission-stealers.

You're just choosing not to, and getting mad if someone exploits the weakness in your strategy due to poor choices on your part.

I’m not accusing you, but when people talk about 1e like it’s solitaire, I think they have either fallen into the trap of winning at all costs or have probably accepted a slimeyer way to victory because they certainly do not think of dilemma as an interaction. That’s how I’m openly against any mechanic that allows you to cheese through dilemma (nilz, Anastasia, kes).

There we go. See? If it's not the strategy that he's specifically prepared to face, then it must be "slimy" by definition!

Before the offloading of rules into the OTF format or even the existence of cards like intermix or fair play, there was a huge door of simply playing trek by not playing trek at all. And yes this assumes that anyone agrees that the basic and intended flow of the game is to report personnel and ships, attempt your own missions, and overcome your opponents dilemma. So, circling back, that’s why mission stealing is a cheese ball strat IMO.

Your reasoning is circular, which is another logical fallacy. Amusing that you seem to partially understand the circular nature of your argument, but I don't think you get that that's poor logic, by definition.

It intentionally circumvents the intended design of the game. It’s my opinion, but the evidence is there the game agrees with me.

You haven't provided a whit of evidence.

[Dunnagh]

I think this thread is ready to be printed out and hung up on the wall. It basically contains everything awesome in this forum:

1) Someone asks about a rule
2) It turns out (as so often) that it´s not THAT easy
3) Rules-Lawyering ensues
4) Nostalgia ensues
5) blame the CC ensues
6) @BCSWowbagger posts a (to me:) very welcome huge wall of text <3

As to the intent of Espionage Cards: Mission Stealing has always been a part of this game - Up to DS9 where HQ: Defensive Measures was introduced (and interestingly, this excludes Espionage!) - but it seems the effect wasnt broad enough so Fair Play was brought in shortly after.

As cards were highly accessible, Fair Play became more of a rule and less of a situational effect. Yeah - you could try to sneak a steal once your opponent got careless and had no Referee in play - but this really only happened to unexperienced players and created no-fun-situations.

So I do support the CCs idea of making certain cards a rule. This leaves the question if we want mission stealing at all. Running a 40-point mission over a 35-point mission isnt a good idea as 5 points arent that much in contrast to leaving you open to a steal.

So IF we want mission stealing: how would we want it?

[stressedoutatumc]

And yes this assumes that anyone agrees that the basic and intended flow of the game is to report personnel and ships, attempt your own missions, and overcome your opponents dilemma

This is indeed the modern conception of the game. This was not Decipher's original conception of the game in 1994: the decision to print an opponent's side of the mission was clearly intentional. The Premiere rulebook devotes a full paragraph to mission stealing, even italicizing that "Any player ... can attempt the mission, regardless of who placed the card on the spaceline."

Yet by 1999 Decipher was moving the game towards the modern conception, where the default is that your missions are yours and yours alone. BCSWowbagger's question is *why* this change happened. Many games have "stealing" rules that are accepted as perfectly natural. Nobody thinks it's cheese to intercept a pass in football, or to steal in basketball, it's part of the game and you have to stay on your toes; if I understood his question correctly, it's as if football players collectively decided that interceptions were unfair and lobbied the NFL to ban them. This would be bizarre and needing explanation. Why is something originally part of the game no longer "fair play"?

My main thesis is that it had to do with the changing balance between the difficulty of overcoming dilemmas vs. solving missions, as personnel and dilemmas got stronger and downloading became more prevalent. What was originally a balanced strategy in 1994 became much more powerful by 1998, and against the background of this deeper shift in the game stealing was reined in.

So I’d submit that this whole discussion from all parties is moot. The modern game rejects mission stealing.

I understand your NFL example, but it actually goes to my point. The team took the risk of throwing a pass and most interceptions are the result of a mistake made during that action (seeding a mission more than 40 pts). Some are the results of a weird happenstance like a tipped ball (both seeding the same mission). And a very very small percentage is the direct result of a great defensive play on the ball (a difficult to pull off strategy but certainly not cheese).

It’s no longer fair play (haha) because of the expansion of the game and the interaction of new cards. I agree that in 99 it was just part of the game, but that was also a game with a fairly small card base and more limited options in terms of strategy and even the missions themselves.

The fact that we have to keep referencing rules from 20+ years ago is kind of the point. The game has evolved and it’s better for it. While I’m not accusing you, it’s the same reason no one can play any of the legacy decks getting posted by the dozens in the deckbuilding thread. None of them are relevant or competitive and the ones that are rely on some cheese ball strat that subverts the game. Doing anything to win kills games and creates a toxic player base. Imagine a game today with a random person who can simply complete your missions to win because they miseeded a bunch of dilemma or simply knows the dilemma order so they solve with a bunch of bonus. That was the game and it was awful.

[Rachmaninoff]

I agree with this take. As Dunnagh pointed out, there are actually several different lines of discussion going on within this thread. One of them is "why did the concept of the game change," and this is what I was explaining; my post was NOT meant to advocate returning to the 1994-1998 concept of the game, just a historical explanation of how and why it changed. (To continue the NFL example, imagine that the rules of football underwent dramatic changes, like during the early years of STCCG; it is very possible that the rules around interceptions may also have needed adjustment to maintain balance, and it's worth asking why and how.)